Femme fatale

Two presidents seek a hostage deal

FOR most of his nearly five years as Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe has rejected any deal with the FARC guerrillas for a prisoner swap to secure the release of some 60 prominent hostages. So why has he suddenly freed nearly 200 FARC prisoners, including Rodrigo Granda, one of its leaders?

Colombians, most of whom support Mr Uribe's tough security policies, are baffled. The FARC called the move a “farce”. Even more farcically, Mr Granda protested against his own release. The FARC insists that it will free its hostages, who include Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate seized in 2002, only after a negotiation to be held in an area from which the government would withdraw its troops. Though Mr Uribe has sometimes wavered on this, he again rejected it this week.

The explanation for Mr Uribe's behaviour probably lies in his desperate need for friends abroad. Though he has made Colombia much safer, the Democrats who control the United States' Congress criticise his government's human-rights record. The president arrived in Washington, DC, on June 6th for his second lobbying trip in a month. Earlier, a congressional sub-committee voted to cut proposed aid to Colombia of some $700m by 10% and shift much of it from military to social programmes. The Democrats are also refusing to ratify a free-trade agreement with Colombia.

Mr Uribe's opponents say the prisoner release is to pave the way for a controversial proposal to free a dozen pro-government legislators jailed on suspicion of links with right-wing paramilitaries. But Mr Uribe said he had freed Mr Granda, whose seizure in Venezuela three years ago caused a diplomatic row, at the request of Nicolas Sarkozy, France's new president.

Mr Sarkozy's office said that he hoped that Mr Granda's release could help free the hostages. Ms Betancourt is a minor figure in Colombia but an iconic one in France, where she studied. She has dual citizenship and two French children. A vast portrait of her hangs from the façade of Paris's town hall. When foreign minister in 2003, Dominique de Villepin, her former professor, sent a crack team to rescue her; their mission was embarrassingly aborted in Brazil.

Since his election, Mr Sarkozy has taken up her case with vigour, twice inviting her children to the Elysée Palace. Liberating Ms Betancourt would be a spectacular political coup for a president whose action-man style marks a break with the era of Jacques Chirac and who faces two-round legislative elections on June 10th and 17th.

At what price, though? French diplomats insist they merely want to “facilitate” a “humanitarian exchange”, and that they are not negotiating directly with the FARC, which is listed by Europe and the United States as a terrorist organisation. “We do not consider that we are breaching our principles,” said one diplomat. That may not impress Colombians, who watched as the FARC kidnapped a police commander and two others this week.